Breaking the Blueprint

Why Stadiums Are Now Data Farms

• Paul Banks • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Sports stadiums aren’t just places to watch a match anymore – they’ve become data farms. This episode of Breaking the Blueprint dives into how stadiums are transforming into year-round engagement hubs, where every fan interaction creates valuable insights.

Our guest explains why the old matchday-first mindset is gone, replaced by experiences that stretch far beyond 90 minutes. From data silos to automation, from loyalty schemes to personalisation, we uncover what really drives value in modern sports business.

We also explore how players are now brands, why shirt sales send shockwaves across global markets, and why stadiums are being designed to host far more than sport. The conversation breaks down how technology, culture, and commerce intersect – and what that means for future growth.

If you want to know how sports organisations can turn fan passion into measurable revenue while improving the experience at every touchpoint, this episode has the answers.

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#BreakingTheBlueprint #SportsBusiness #StadiumTech #CX #Innovation #DataStrategy #AI #FanExperience #SportsMarketing #MarTech #BusinessGrowth #Personalisation #DigitalTransformation #Revenue #Loyalty

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Iqbal:

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint. We're now at episode nine. Iqbal Javaid and I'm joined by Vinay Parmar. we're delighted to have a special guest with us, which we'll come to very shortly. Vinay. Tell me, what's been going on since, our last session. It feels like we've done quite a few of these already a very short space of Yeah,

Vinay:

it's been good. Yeah. Well, we had the last one with Chris Morrisey from Zoom, which was a fantastic episode. Lots of good deep dives into tech, into vendors. That phrase of hijack CX came back up again. Yeah. really, really good. Really good. Really enjoyed talking to Chris. What a great guy as well. so that was good fun. since then I've been out on the road a bit. I've been back at Zoom recording for their CX summit.

Iqbal:

That's right. Yeah. When is that

Vinay:

22nd of October.

Iqbal:

Okay.

Vinay:

So they are, they're beaming that across EMEA that'll be a lot of fun. and then, I've been going round, I'm down to Wrexham for a couple of days, Llandudno, with my duties with Transport for Wales. and then I've been out seeing clients have just kicked off another project with the client as well, which is part of the travel. So I'm gonna see some of their, some of their sites. So yeah, it's been a, it's been a busy start to September from a quite a quiet August where I took the time out to reflect and, think about goals and ideas and what we wanted to do next and those kind of things to suddenly it's just gone 100mph it's really

Iqbal:

ramped up. I think I'm finding this as well at the moment where you've got, you know, you had the summer break, everybody's been out, and now suddenly. Everybody's come back and they wanna get things done. Yeah. and all these different projects are starting to come to life again. So it's, it's definitely gonna be a busy period now, kind of coming up to Christmas time.

Vinay:

Yeah. Let's hope so. Let's hope so. and busy and football's back

Iqbal:

unfortunately for Yeah. For Yeah. Being, being United fans. I know. I'm sure. We'll, We'll, we'll, be discussing don't say it yet too loud. We don't

Vinay:

wanna lose subscribers on the podcast.

Iqbal:

I, I, I think to be honest, most people sympathise. So if we may get some sympathetic subscribers. Yeah,

Vinay:

yeah, yeah. Well, football's back and cricket's back. Cricket has been back as well. That's rescued some of my joy being a cricket fan. But, really excited for this episode. And, you know, it's got a link to football.'cause we're gonna be talking and delving into the world of fan experience. And I was talking to the taxi driver on the way into the studio this morning. He's a Liverpool fan, fortunately. Birmingham. Yeah, yeah, in In Birmingham? Yeah. In Birmingham from Aston. Make that make sense. so we were, we were chatting about fan experience and I was just talking to him about our guest and what our guest does and the clubs that he works with and how football clubs, are interesting.'cause from a loyalty perspective, they're fan base, right? So you're not gonna change your club because, we're not gonna change clubs just because we're having a bad time right now. So from a loyalty perspective and affinity, the, the relationship is there, but it's how are they working with that relationship? How are they creating an experience that fans will want to go back to? How does it continue to drive, through their communities, through their families? Further friendship and improving that onsite experience. So it was really, it was just an interesting conversation. And if you've seen any of the Birmingham City documentary, when Tom Brady's talking about it, there's real, you can see the kind of idea, the big thinking about this is experience. This is not just about coming to a game. So without doing the whole podcast between you and I, let's introduce our guest. I'm really, really delighted to bring to the show, Sid Desai, who runs BC4. and Sid and I met through a mutual friend.

Sid:

It's alright. Nice to meet you guys. Yeah,

Vinay:

Nice to meet you guys. Yeah, nice to meet you. And thanks for coming in.

Sid:

thank you for having me. Pleasure. Yeah.

Vinay:

Sid, tell us a bit about you. you know, where did it start and, and your journey to, BC4, which is really interesting organisation and some of the work you're doing is, is fantastic. Just tell, tell us a bit more about yourself. Do I start right at the beginning? Like, yeah, go, go. Where did you, where did you study? What

Sid:

was school? Yeah. So I did a math in computer science degree at King's College London and then decided. traditionally do I go into finance? Do I go into it? And decided down the IT route. started in hospitality industry, supporting hospitality systems, and then really got into sport and football through implementation of retail systems, right back in sort of 2004, early two thousands. working with likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Man City, and being a Spurs fan, you know, that was kind of, A moment. I'll never forget the first day it turned up at White Hart Lane. I was like a kid in the sweet shop and you know, just my luck, Jermaine Defoe and Ledley King walk over and I was like, you know, I thought I'd won the lottery. so yeah, started then, and then. Worked for Oracle for a number of years. various different roles. IT director. but I was then asked to go to Spurs, as a, consultant to help them in terms of the new stadium development project, which was just, I mean, the best experience to, not just from a, being a passionate Spurs fan, but actually to be involved in the stadium from the ground up when there was literally nothing there. And learned so much about kind of the inner workings of, of the club, not just what you see on the outside as a, as a fan. people say don't get too close to something you love. that, that phrase is, is slightly true. But I wouldn't have changed the experience for the world just

Iqbal:

on the Spurs. I, I went to hospitality late last season, so I've kind of been through the Spurs experience and when I compare that against my, my club Manchester United Worlds Apart. Yeah. In terms of the experience from the second I arrive as a fan at the stadium, the way I can get to my seat, like it's just that whole process was seamless. With the way that, you know, spurs had it all organised, so Yeah.

Sid:

And, and there was a lot of thought that went into that. Yeah. Every minute detail was thought about. obviously it was about also how do you maximise the revenue from that, from that major, major investment. and it's obviously for the community, it's phenomenal what, what it's done in terms of regenerating it. Mm. But the whole vision that Daniel had about NFL and, you know, concerts and Yeah. Every detail, acoustic sound, you know, lighting. It's the best experience That they could offer close to the pitch. So when you're watching the games, you, you feel sort of immersed in it. Yeah. it, Yeah. I mean, and, and the advantage was that a lot of the stadiums that I've worked with subsequently, the likes of Real Madrid.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Sid:

I mean, amazing venues, but the foundations are the foundations, and therefore to try and change the structure of something like that is, is, is, very difficult.

Vinay:

And your point about the detail is really important and we, we'll dive into some more of that in a second. I just wanted to, and, and as a complete contrast, I've just this morning trying to buy tickets to the India, England, one day International Edgbaston I've got a priority membership. Got a lovely alert, you can jump on buy tickets this morning. You got a 15 minute window while you're on this website. And I selected tickets and for some reason I don't know what had happened. I selected six and I thought I'll change my mind and sit somewhere else, but it kept those tickets in my basket. And you can only buy 10, but I was trying to buy another six and it wouldn't let me do it. And I can see the timer ticking at the bottom, but there's nothing obvious telling me that I've already got six tickets in my basket other than the price at the bottom. And when you're in that 15 minutes of stress, you're not dividing that and going, hang on, that doesn't make sense. So I've managed to get them. Thankfully Did

Iqbal:

you get more than 10 or?

Vinay:

I got, I managed to get six. That was good. Yeah. So I got six. I'd love to have one, by the way, Ben. Yeah. We'll do we'll do a deal. We'll do a deal at the end. yeah, so just complete experience, but just your, your journey then. so you were football stadiums fan, talking about all those, but in. terms of the the business BC4 where, where did that come from? Was

Sid:

that, so it kind of, we, we start as in. We've had a major rebrand recently and so the company was previously called KPSD, it's now BC4 and. we really target two, specific verticals or three BC for sports, BC for events and BC for retail. and. Saw an opportunity within the market that actually a lot of the products that people are using in these, in this space are legacy kind of systems. Archaic, infrastructure. Yeah. security risks, very siloed, best of breed approach where you try and integrate multiple systems together, don't have an homogenised data set. And coming from an ERP technology background, I saw the potential in Microsoft Business Central. It's an ERP system, but it's an ERP system that touches all the endpoints. and we have the specialty in sports, which then made it and retail, which makes us kind of a, a good partner, a good fit, to understand how the business works to maximise the investment in that technology set. and Microsoft, I mean, they invest. I've heard numbers, I dunno the exact number, but big numbers, but it, but it, but it's billions. I mean, it is billions in their platform. And that's everything from infrastructure, security, product development, roadmap. So the product's not going to stand still. It, it will continually be evolving and as we'll talk about later, you know, there's a whole push on data on AI and how you can actually, you know, optimise that system for maximum efficiency. and. And, and yeah, not only your own, users and their satisfaction, but ultimately to deliver that to their end clients, whoever that that may be. so yeah, BC sort of the rebrand was this year, but we've been going since around 2018. Yeah. really grew from 2018 onwards, more in the retail space And then started in the sports space. And, we we're a unique partner. There's lots of business central partners. And that's one of the advantages of having a, a platform such as that where, you know, it's often n it's known in the industry that sometimes you may have a proprietary system and you fall out with that person and then all of a sudden you're stuck with this system that nobody can actually maintain. yeah. So with the community that we're in, yes, we're a partner. We obviously want to retain all of our clients and acquire new ones. but you're not limited by, you know, the platform is. It's gonna be there forever. and therefore, you, our customers have freedom of choice. Yeah. And that means that investment is protected. so we specialise retail, we specialise in sports, and we've done some really large, large events. privileged humbled actually to have done the Olympics. did the Ryder Cup in Italy. Did the rugby World Cup in France, worked with the likes of Real Madrid, Villa, and a number of other clubs. and obviously then we have the retail side of the business, but I know this is about sport, so focused on that. Well, well,

Vinay:

well, no, I mean, I, I think you were gonna ask this like your, your journey has been. Data-centric in as much as you've been involved with data and systems for a while. And before we dive into the, kind of the exciting bit about talking about the specific partners you work with, just a bit about what have, what's that journey and change been like? Because working with data's not new companies have wanted to do it. If you think about what Tescos have been doing with Dun hum Bee, don't, I think that's the right partner. That's right. That's right. and their club card, and they were, they were held up as a, you know, a real star war of collecting customer data, using customer data, et cetera. And their recent results would lead, would lead you to draw the conclusion that that's been really fruitful for them in driving revenue. Yeah. But over the sort of the decade, what have, what's that change been like both from attitudinally, but also what technology's enabled differently now?

Sid:

So I think fundamentally the technology has to support the experience. Yeah. And it's about, and you talked about it earlier, that it's not now just going to watch a football match. It's about trying to, Make a day of it you know, and, and, and Spurs is a great example of it because you've got go-kart tracks, you can do absailing, you can, you know, you've got things for the whole family to do before you go to a game. And technology has to obviously support all of those different initiatives. So I, I think the evolution of obviously in the stadium part is one part, but it's, it's about enrichment of that experience, so, okay. yeah, so evolution, the stadiums, it's not just a venue now anymore, it's a, you know, it's a day, it's a day out. It's a,

Iqbal:

it's full on experience, isn't it? I think what traditionally, historically it was just the men that used to go and watch football, and I think there's been a real drive to, get families together. Yeah. to build kind of, you know. Now when we go to sporting events, as you've said, say, it's, it's there to, make it interesting for everybody, kids. Mm. You know, women as well, but that,

Sid:

but that data part is actually now historically, the, it's been silos of data.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Sid:

And you don't really have a true view of, of how people are interacting with you as an organisation. Yeah. and, and that's because over, over time, people have gone with you know what they. What from a, from a, from a personal securities in, if I'm A CIO or A CFO, I'll go with something that someone else has done before. Yeah. and and try and not break that mold of disruption. Yeah. and therefore those systems are very good at what they do individually disparate, aren't they? Yeah. They're disparate. And, and therefore, when you don't have that joined up view of, of how people are engaging with you. How do you, how do you make their experience better?

Vinay:

Mm-hmm.

Sid:

And that's where things are definitely changing.

Vinay:

Yeah. And I suppose capturing data at different points as well.'cause I guess, you know, the evolution is a bit, you know, companies always sat on data and, you know, this is phrase isn't there, that most companies are data rich and insight poor and its ability to extract that data. I think that's been the big technology change, you know, with the advent of AI and the speed at which it can analyse and contextualise and bring data, data points together. And there's a couple of examples. So just on your point about the shift in people that go to sporting events, you know. you would normally collect your data from, I've bought the match ticket, I'm coming to the match. That's me, that's what I'm doing. But if you think about movements like fans for diversity, with the FA and people that are bringing different people to the ground, they might be purchasing their tickets through different avenues and have different journeys to get to the match. They, they, they go to different things. So how do you designing those different data points to learn about that. And the second thing, and, and kind of an early story that I shared with Al, which kind of was part of the reason we did this podcast, was I shared this example of my friend that was at the supermarket. And she'd been a loyal customer for years, for five years solid. Spent 250 quid a week on a shopping, religiously used the shopping, home shopping as her way to manage her life.'cause her and her husband had busy jobs and she's got a couple of young kids. She even bought the, the premium pass by direct debit that would give her the slots to the premium. delivery. Delivery. And everything worked great until it didn't, and one day they screwed up the delivery. And I won't, you know, go into all of the stories about what happened. The upshot was she didn't get an apology, it wasn't handled properly. And then she just moved her business to a, to a arrival. But that business that she moved from had the contact center, which had the data point that she'd called and made a complaint. They had a, they had a, they had a data point that said a direct debit has been canceled. That the data point that says, because she had their loyalty scheme, that this person has a shopping habit and now it's fallen off a cliff. Yeah. But they all sat in different teams. Absolutely. And none of it was joined together. And you think, how often does that happen in companies and how often do those data points just sit in a singular report in a board pack over here that says, revenue's doing this, but over here, there's something else happening. And I suppose the exciting thing for me, and the thing I'm really interested in is how do companies join those deuter point data points together?

Sid:

Absolutely. And And I think, you know, it's interesting that you talk about that because. One of the angles that we looked at and, and a lot of clubs are looking at is also the social sentiment side of things. So when you, are having a bad experience and, you tweet it or you, or whatever it's called, an X, sorry. Or you, you know, Insta post it or Facebook, whichever. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, But you know, there is a sentiment there. Oh, I've had the worst experience today and, you know, so and so didn't serve me. And you know, I had to wait in long queues or whatever it might be that. Data is equally as important as understanding how people are interacting and, and that. then is, you know, you've got millions and millions and billions of posts and how do you churn through that? You need data farms that are actually got algorithms that are sitting there and wrapping through this to then be able to then service that up to the relevant teams so that you know within. Minutes. Hours, you know, someone's had a bad experience now that someone could be, you know, your friend that had that past 250 pounds, whatever it was. Yeah. and you don't want to lose their business. so it's har harnessing and harvesting that data, presenting it back, but in a joined up view that it's real time and somebody can then take corrective action on it. Yeah.

Iqbal:

And, and I think that the joined up issue still exists big time. Of course, pretty much every organisation I come across, they've got the same issue, loads of disparate solutions. Just joining those things together is a huge win. That's the first step. And I think lots of organisations are already on that journey, whether it's retail or, or pretty much any industry this applies to. Right. but I think what, what I think what the vision for this is, as you say, not just serving it to people, but how can we get AI to make certain decisions

Sid:

Absolutely.

Iqbal:

By using that data. And

Sid:

there's automation coming in and lots of business processes and there's companies that are doing very well in just focusing on just automating a standard process within your business Yeah, that's right. But now it's. How do you take that to the next level? Yeah. and that's why when I talk about Business Central, I'm very passionate about it because it is a, it is a ecosystem of, you know, yeah. It is one system. and that, and I think that's helps

Vinay:

Yeah. And your automation point's really interesting as well. So, another recent experience,'cause automation works beautifully when it works, but often those automations are also cleared, created in silos. So I bought my car in for an MOT Mm-hmm. with a famous High Street brand who will remain nameless. And, it was really easy. Went online, booked my car, and put the number plate in, told me it was due, picked my s slot, hit book, booked it, got a text message, everything. I thought, well, this is really sleek, it's really good. And then I canceled it because I'd got rid of the car by the time the MOT was due. And then I canceled it. I even got the confirmation text, sorry to see you go, you've canceled your MOT really good. And the next day I got an email saying, we're looking forward to seeing you for your MOT or a couple of days later. And you're like, well, where was the joined up? Bit between, I've just canceled. But there's a, there's obviously a, an automation built that says sequentially send out these Yeah, yeah. but there's not a data point that says, actually suppress these customers. If you get a data point here that says they're canceled or something's changed, yeah. Don't send the email there, there must be a broken chink in the, Yeah, it's, it is a bad design. That's a bad design. Right.

Iqbal:

But I think your point about automation is right. It's, it's built based on a certain use case. Then you get, you get a bunch of these, automations That are built to serve that particular use case. And it doesn't look at it holistically. but it comes back to design. Like, I mean, that, that's just Yeah. Bad, bad, bad design. Yeah.

Sid:

Yeah. And so systemically, yes, join up system, but also from our, our side, it's also one, one stop shop from design. So all the things that we're talking about. Yeah. It's the design, the thought leadership. It's the design. It's the development, it's the testing, it's the implementation. So that we can give a complete service. Now, we're not precious about how much or how little we do.

Iqbal:

Yeah.

Sid:

But we're there to support our clients if, if need be.

Iqbal:

I, I think it's your industry experience. That's what's so valuable here, because actually joining the dot sub with these systems, lots of people can do, but knowing what's important to a football club, for example, that that's the valuable piece where you can bring those and,

Sid:

and we've seen it with recent implementations that we've done for clubs where they have not. Really being able to maximise or being able to drive the business in the direction that they want. Mm-hmm. Because of limitations that they've got in their legacy systems. Yeah. so it's innovation, it's experience. Yeah. it's technology obviously. Yeah. But ultimately it's about satisfaction and it's satisfaction is a quite a wide term. Yeah. Yeah. It's a broad term.

Vinay:

It is. Ultimately the, the goal as we always say, is you want'em to combat, you want'em to tell their friends and you want'em to spend more. Yeah. That's the kind of the three things we want. And just on the point on, on data, like collecting data is one thing. And I look at it like if you look at wearable health tech now as well, we've all got, I, you know, apple watches or we've got wearable tech that measures our heart rate, our number of steps and all these kind of things. And so we collect these data, but how many people are actually joining those bits of data together to give them a, a, a fuller picture? And actually sometimes even with the data, you don't know what you're looking for. So that experience of somebody saying, Hey, by the way, your data's telling you this, this is quite important. Have you not looked at this? Because you don't know what you don't know at the end of the day. And so what I, I kind of guess the segue to that is so football then. Yeah. and landing in football, I know you're a passionate first fan, so it was a dream job, but a. How and how are football clubs using this experience data now and, and, and, to, to kind of improve this fan experience that we talk

Sid:

about? So. There's obviously two kind of streams to this, and we talk about loyalty and when I look at football and loyalty that you can, you can deconstruct it in various different ways. So there's loyalty as a fan to the club. typically generational in, you know, ancestral, father to son. Yeah, yeah. You know, mother to daughter. Yeah. mother to, you know, son, whatever it may be. Yeah. And, and that's where you talk about not changing the team that you support, which is understandable. So there's that loyalty when you look at it that from that angle. But then there's also loyalty around. Retention and acquisition, and that's where the club's loyalty is rewarded back to you and it's that data. and retention acquisition is a big thing in in football because retaining your fans. You know, generational, it's not gonna be a problem. You're gonna support that team forever. But, but acquiring new fans, and if you think about the concept of acquiring new fans, how, how do you do that? now

Iqbal:

performance, I guess, is definitely one, right? I mean, a absolutely.

Vinay:

And in a global market as well. So you've, so the ancestral thing of, I live in the era of support the club. Yeah. Versus I live over in Thailand or I live in Australia or the US and I'm starting to get into football. How am I picking my team? How am I gonna choose who I follow?

Sid:

Exactly. And that's why we joke about this, but kids born in the 1970s, eighties, a lot of'em support Liverpool. Liverpool Man, United, No dis respect to you guys. but you know, so it's like who's performing? And it goes through cycles. You know, there's Liverpool, Man United, then there's Chelsea, there's Man City, probably Liverpool now again. So it's cyclical in that respect. Yeah. But who's performing well because we ultimately watch football or or sport for emotion. And the best emotion is when your team wins. So, so that makes kind of sense. and then you've got the other side of it is also people following players. mm. And, and, and, and, I often think to myself. Do clubs make these investments in? So, so if I have two players that are absolutely identical in their capability, but one's, you know, a poster person from a different territory or a different geographical location, do I pick them that might, you know, drive revenue? Yeah. Because, and if you look at this, sorry, this Son Ming Son Ming effect. Yeah. There's 12 million South Korean fans. Huge. Yeah. That support Tottenham Hotspur That's

Vinay:

It's funny, I, I was talking to somebody from Nike, about sports and how it's evolved. And so I grew up in the Michael Jordan era, which was, you saw Nike as you think Michael Jordan, and that's what you had. And then what's happened more recently is you've seen people like Roger Feder. Break away from major sports brands and create their own sporting brand. Vera Cole is just about to do the same in cricket. and and it got me thinking. And then the other example was when Lionel Messi moved from PSG to, into Miami. The number of fans on his social media that switched. Yeah. Switched. Yeah. So the following the player and the, what I was talking to Nike was about, it used to be you followed the brand and those athletes used to be, just happened to be associated with that brand. Yeah. Now it seems you're following athletes. Yeah. And it doesn't matter about what brand they are, you're now loyal to the athletes. So look at the amount of people that follow Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, roger Federer. you know, virat kohli, all of these sporting greats, they have got this, they have got their, almost their database of customers Yeah. People, who will be influenced by their actions, their behaviors, and what they do. And I think that's, that's a really interesting shift that's taken place. Absolutely. In sports. Sorry, we se we no

Sid:

and, and and just on that point, I think. When Son moved to LAFC. Yeah, he, his shirt sales surpassed Messi and, LeBron James. and, that's just like, it's

Iqbal:

crazy. It's, it's

Sid:

insane. Like,

Iqbal:

cause the whole population in South Korea just gone and bought that shirt. Haven't Yeah.

Sid:

But it's insane. So you can see why there's all, obviously I'm speculating, but this probably strategic investments made by clubs. Yeah. Looking at that angle as well. but obviously they have to be able to. Perform that, that's a, yeah, that's a given. You

Vinay:

can't just put someone in because they look like that. But, but I, I guess it's that, almost that simple human thing about when you can see yourself in the picture, you associate yourself more with that picture. So when you can see somebody that looks like you mm-hmm. Yeah. in that, you know, if you think back to the seventies and eighties when Viv Anderson broke through as the first black player to cap the, I think, did he Captain England or play for England? when you saw the, you know, the, the three degrees here at West Bromwich Albion, Sarah Regis, and, and those guys breaking through, then that created a following because people saw them that way. I remember the first time we saw Madhur Jaffrey on BBC tv, the only Indian personality I'd ever seen suddenly we're like, we're on tv. So, yeah. I guess it's that same thing when you can see yourself Yeah. In the thing. so there's no doubt there must be some strategic

Sid:

conversation ab and then, and I think the loyalty side of it. So we talked, sorry, we digress. But yeah, so there's loyalty about retention and acquisition. Yeah. And, and, and that's, a key metric. The data behind that is, is invaluable because that's about personalising. Offers, understanding your, your fan base, how can you really hone in on what their interests are because you want to make their experience even better. Yeah. And, and in order to do that, you need to understand them as a, as a, as an individual. And, and,

Iqbal:

and I think going back to loyalty, yes, the loyalty stays with the club, but I do find. My spend with my club has decreased. IE I'm not going to as many games. I'm not buying as much merchandise like this season. Usually I'll end up with a a, a football top every season. But this season I was like, I feel a bit embarrassed to be wearing the late. It's like, it, it doesn't impact you. I'll always stay loyal, but the club's not seeing as much of my money now because I'm, I'm not seeing the performance, but also I'm not seeing any other value, like, for instance. United lose, which is pretty much every weekend. on the, I didn't say that. yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So on the app, I'll get a clip sent to me of, the last time we won in the nineties, which Berg is so just to keep me feeling very positive about it. Yeah. It's a bit of a personalised experience and I get it, I get what we're trying to do, but it's okay if you're not gonna perform well for me. What else have you got to offer me?

Sid:

But, but that, that, that is one variable that unfortunately no club. Can control. Can control. Yeah. Yeah. And, And, performance on the pitch. Yeah. Is, is that one magic, you know? Yeah. That's the magic, ingredient.

Iqbal:

Exactly. So what else can be done?

Sid:

Yeah. So then it comes down to, okay, trying to, not incentivise, but build a stronger connection with individuals, understanding your fans better, understanding the demographic of fans, the geo geography of your fan. And that all ties back in from sort of the direct. Revenue that you would contribute towards that club, but also all the sort of indirect partnerships and and you know, commercial sponsorships that sit behind some of these deals.

Vinay:

And, and what kind of data?'cause there's clearly the, the transaction of I bought tickets, you've got data, but what sort of data are football clubs looking at collecting? Where, where, so what they wouldn't traditionally collected before, I guess, and what they're now looking at And I

Sid:

think with the movement of tech and think things becoming far more accessible for a lot more people. So when we talk about these things, it shouldn't just be profiled for the, you know, the big six clubs in, in, in the Premier League or in the Big five leagues that this is accessible to, to, most clubs now, from, from all leagues. It's understanding how you are interacting with the club at all levels. So yes, you talk about a ticket, but actually are you buying hospitality? Do you ever buy hospitality? Have you ever upgraded? Or is it, or are you always sitting in the same seat? Do you ever resell your ticket? Who are you reselling your ticket to? What. Merchandise Have you bought? When was the last me, you know, what's your average merchandise spend? Do you buy any food and beverage? When you attend a game, what time do you enter the stadium? What time do you leave the stadium? So these are all different data points. What content are you looking at? Are you looking at, on your phone? Are you looking at it on your, on your, on your. you know, on your computer, what is it, What specific content is it, is it a player that you're looking at? Is it actually, you know, looking at the history of the club or whatever it might be? So there's data all over these different points, and they're all kind of individual data points that you then want to aggregate into a single. View. Yeah. Because then all of a sudden I can start understanding your thought processes and how I can then encourage you to, you know, yeah, I come to a game, you know, or upsell you something, or whatever it may be.

Vinay:

And, and do, do you, do they, do they look,'cause we were talking about obviously this, this kind of expansion of what experience means. So if you take some of the new stadiums that are being built, like we were talking about Birmingham City earlier, that they've built a stadium, but they're building a concourse and they're building stuff around it. And it's that dwell time of keeping people as close to the stadium as possible. So is there a world where they start to collect data points from these other places around and start to build that and,

Sid:

and, and, yeah, that's a really interesting point. So a, a, lot of this data, unfortunately, has to be'cause of GDPR. Yeah. And, and personal security has to be anonymised, but it's, we have done this with other clubs. So you look at, you work with your payment providers, you work with your banks or whoever. Providers may be, and you can understand the pattern of spend of people, how they get to the ground. So you can create heat maps of, you know, a lot of people coming from the south, for example, and take, you know, and they all, a lot of people stop at Costa coffee or wherever it may be. They can't say it's you taking this route in. But that helps from a marketing and a kind of a, where do I build my next popup store? Where do I, you know, build my, if I wanna hawk some umbrellas or scarves or, you know, where, where's the best strategic place to be? Yeah. So that's one side of it, kind of overlaying different data sources. Mm-hmm. An anonymised data sources, but overlaying that to try and give you. A better profile.

Vinay:

Mm-hmm.

Sid:

and then within the ground or outside of the ground? Yes. A lot of clubs, again, it's financial position is,

Vinay:

yeah,

Sid:

understandable. But building hotels, building large concourse, building activity centers, doing this, that and the other. It's all, again, that data. Is all in, interfaced and, and and sort of pulled together. Yeah. and, it's all about then how do I, if I can demonstrate that I can have 60,000 fans turning up and I can have a hotel. Why don't I go and sell it to a Hilton branding or whatever it may be, so that I can then commercialise that because I know before every match day I'm gonna have that hotel is gonna be fully, fully sold out. Yeah. so fully occupied. Yeah. so there's so many different points. It's just the Yeah.

Vinay:

Yeah. And, and I suppose the other bit is, did that answer your question? Yeah, it did. No, it did. It did. Because what I was thinking about was specifically I was thinking about an example that somebody had shared with me. Well, actually it was, it was an example. So this, it was something that I actually did. So when I was at National Express, I was head of the innovation lab. As part of one of my duties. And we had a company that came in and they used to, track mobile devices anonymously. So the same way as your weather app knows where you are, it doesn't know who you are, but it knows where you are. And we were using it to track when people come in on a service, where do they go next? And we, we found this service that was going into central of London,'cause it goes to Victoria Station, but then most of the people who were on that service were then coming back out of London. So we're like, well, why have we designed the service to go into London when actually we can come out. How, how

Iqbal:

did you work that out then? How did you know they were coming back out of

Vinay:

So what it is, it tracks the, it tracks their mobile device from when they get on all the way into London, and then it follows that individual device out. And a lot of retail, shopping malls use. So I, there was an, I was doing some work with a shopping mall company years ago and they were talking about how they follow footfall in a, in a shopping mall. And they strategically place certain brands at certain sites. So you, you always have where Selfridges is and the higher end stores is at one end, and then they have the lower end stores at the other end, and then they can, they slice up their advertising and a space accordingly and where people hang out because that then moves people through the thing. And we, we had it with the airports episode Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'll

Iqbal:

tell you what, in caner, I dunno if you've noticed, but in Caner Wharf you've got access into HSBC's head office. Yeah, so that's where all the traders work, right? And there's a, there's a, there's a specific entrance through the canary Wharf like underpass. And just before the entrance you've got, three or four. luxury watch, stores, obviously, yeah. You know, designed to be there to to try and capture those that, you know, obviously, you know, potentially they've got money to spend and that kind of thing. So yeah, I think it's, there's obviously a strategic perspective on that as well.

Vinay:

And then, then you layer on the other bit that you said, which is actually particularly stadiums like Tottenham and the newest stadiums, they're now multipurpose, so Real Madrids as well. The, you know, the way the pitch comes out, they can, they can do things, so you kind of go, well, actually it's no longer just about the, the re So the, the club aren't just looking at what's my football revenue? They're going, well, what happens when we have a concert? What happens when we have NFL? What happens when we have, you know, the Olympics or what, whatever the thing might be that they hold. And that again, is all data points. And I suppose there's also, a correlate, I suppose there's a crossover of, of, of the, if it's your stadium, how many of our fans that follow football then also come come to the NFL game? Yeah. Or the Yeah. To those things as well. And I guess that cross sell. Of people that might not necessarily be born NFL fans, but might be a Spurs fan and might think, well actually I'll go to the stadium'cause I like it there. It's a nice environment and I'll catch an NFL game. Yeah. And suddenly you've, you've acquired a potential

Sid:

New fan. base. New fan. Yeah. Or new demographic of fan. Yeah.

Vinay:

from your set, from your existing base as opposed to acquiring a,

Sid:

absolutely. Yeah. But, but the luxury of that, that kind of venue and that experience is, you know, it's, it's limited in terms of the number of clubs that could actually, can do it. Yeah. You know, we're talking, Birmingham City, obviously you. With Tom Brady. Brilliant. And the new stadium looks phenomenal. The, the designs of it. I

Iqbal:

think that that's the problem, isn't it? You've got, these other clubs, I'm gonna use United as an example. They've got a really old stadium, old infrastructure, so they can't necessarily make huge changes to be able to provide, like, you know, when, when, I went with my family was a, it was a preseason game just a few months ago. And, we, we went to go and spend some money in the merch store. Yeah, we could, we couldn't find it. Yeah. First of all, number one. And then secondly, we ran out of time because it was a huge crowd. Yeah. And then we had to catch our train bank. Yeah. And, And, actually they, they, they lost out again on custom because, you know, they were you, one, they just have one main store. and everybody's bottleneck into like, it just, it's just not, and, and we

Sid:

thought about that quite at Spurs, you know, is like when you when you halftime, normally it's a choice of going to the toilet. Or, or getting a, a drink.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. You don't

Sid:

really get time to, to do both.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Sid:

So how was it, you know, how do You make that experience possible? One, yes. You want them to buy food and beverage, and you also, obviously they need to go to the toilet. Yeah. So you wanna make it frictionless. Yeah. You want to make speed of service as efficient as possible. Yeah. And we looked at lots of different things like retinal scanning or you know, biometric, but actually then there's hygiene and other things. And what, and actually when you, when you, broke it right down the quickest form of payment still cash is, is no, it is tap, tap, tap, tap, tap is the quickest form. Quickest form

Vinay:

form of payment Yeah. We see it on public transport whenever you put pay as you go in. Yeah, it. does that.

Sid:

you sit there with a retinal scan and you see texts showing and yes, you know, we could implement it. Our, our systems support it. They support RFID checkout and all of those different things. You can drop your basket in, it'll calculate the, how much the, goods are. You don't scan anything. You take it out and walk out Now. They're all great concepts, but actually like retinal scanning or, or for self pouring beer. Okay. There's a benefit to a certain degree of the self pouring part, but you still need to pay and you need to make that as quick as possible. Yeah. So what tech

Vinay:

Yes,

Sid:

will work unless it's take and go.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sid:

But then take and go when they tried it, you know, just walk out concepts just. Cameras. Really? Yeah. And you're not gonna RFID all the, all the items and all of

Vinay:

So you, you'll you'll have high percentage of loss

Sid:

in Exactly. Shrinkage and there's so many other bits and underage people drinking and all of these other different things. So, yeah.

Vinay:

Yeah, It, it's funny, you people, you showcase those ideas. And it's funny, I go back to public transport there, having a ticket is your QR code. You think, oh, that's great. We can scan it, collect the data, but then getting on a bus and paying cash or tap Yeah. Is way faster than I've now gotta scan and if the thing doesn't scan my screen, I've now increased my dwell time at the bus stop. Exactly. And it takes longer to load the bus. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. and that's not built in to the timetables and things. Then it has a knock on effect. And it's one of those, unintended consequences again, when things are designed in silo. Yeah. so, but, but just coming back to data, so great, we're collecting all this data. We know that brands want to use it. We've got this broader experience thing. What are, what are the big challenges of measuring things like lifetime value of a fan? And, and, and how do you, how do clubs really better understand. That kind of metric and act it.

Sid:

Yeah. So lifetime value and it's like the, the holy grail of, in my view of, of like any, any sporting organisation. and traditionally it's kind of been what's your average spend per year? and how, what's the average number of years, or sorry, the total number of years that you are gonna be Yeah. Affiliated or engaged with the club and the two multiplied together and and that's the number. But actually I don't feel that is the number because there's so many other variables that come into this. And I think this is where AI and enrichment of data, it's gonna take things to a totally new, new level. Mm. Um, because circumstances change, you know. For better or worse, you know, health. Yeah. financial family commitments. Yeah, exactly. Jobs, location, where I'm living. All of those different things all play. So how do I truly value or get a value for what Sid is gonna be worth? To me as a, as a fan for the foreseeable. Mm-hmm. And I, and I really don't think that, I don't think anyone's quite cracked that, that metric yet.

Speaker:

Hi, it's Viaye here from Breaking the Blueprint. Sorry to interrupt your viewing. I hope you've been enjoying the conversation so far. What a great discussion. But it was at this point in our conversation that we had a little technical mishap and one of our cameras went offline. So for the remaining 20 minutes of this episode, you'll see Iqbal, you'll see Sid, you'll hear all three of us. I just won't be in shot. Maybe that's a good thing. Who knows?! Anyway, enjoy the rest of the episode. Thanks for watching.

Vinay:

No. And I, I don't think most businesses have either.'cause I, I continually have this conversation. So say you are two customers of my business, said you come into my business every month and you spend 20 quid, so every a year you're worth to me 12 times 20, right? Yeah. Iqbal you come into my store once and you spent 50 quid, but you don't, you only come maybe once again in the year, maybe don't spend as much, but you are referring lots of your friends. So you've referred to me, seven or eight friends of yours who have all come and spent 20, 30 quid with me and then have gone down to have their own purchase journey. Who's more valuable? You or you? And actually, how do I, and I think it's interesting when you look at some of the, the, the tech first people like Uber, and their early acquisition strategy of, you know, a refer code, refer a friend so you can track who you're referring. I think Octopus Energy, again, refer a friend in, I did it recently of, I've bought a certain brand of electric car that Yeah. Where you can refer a friend in and then they get credit to their accountant. So, so you've got these kind of data points now and, and the reason I'm bringing that up is part of, I think is also why it's difficult to get to is I was interviewing a chap from L'Oreal. At a, conference that I was hosting and we were talking about hyper-personalisation. Mm. And he made a really interesting point that I don't think is really highlighted enough. And he said that actually when you're designing these loyalty schemes, people think it's to do with how many points do you collect and how many, you know, how many, rewards you give and stuff. And that seems to the focus of design, but actually it's collecting behavior and data. Yeah. And, but if you don't deliberately design that in, you don't collect data at the right time and you don't collect the behavior points at the right time, so therefore you can't then get the framework. And I think partly, again, coming back to that bit in organisations, everyone wants to focus on their piece of the pie and designs their thing. And there's not always a collective view that says, actually, if we're gonna put this in, we'll collect data here, here, here, here, and here. Because it's gonna help the organisation to understand the customer. Because marketing, yes, you might have an angle on, I wanna know how many people click through, go through the funnel and buy. But actually beyond that. What are the other data points that then help construct the story across the piece? And, and, and it was just, it was just, I think he articulated it probably better than I, and I think that is part of the problem because that's why you can't get to lifetime value.'cause those data points aren't built in.

Sid:

Oh, I'd agree. And I would say, say to my kids all the time, apple, Google Front, they know more about us Yeah. Than we know about us. Yeah. they know what time you wake up, what time to go to sleep, what, how you spend, where you travel to, how long it takes to travel. Yeah. What you like, what you don't like. And it's, they've got so much information on you, but obviously it's not available in the public domain and the clubs can't leverage that kind of level of information. But imagine if you could overlay that Yeah. Into, you know, a, a typical fan, how much more richness of information you, you would have.

Iqbal:

Yeah. You could achieve like great things and, and I think us as consumers are yet to benefit from all these. Data points that everybody's collecting, like we recognise it, right? We're completely connected to all these different apps, devices, and everything else. The the problem is, as you said, nobody's quite cracked the code yet to be able to figure out how this can benefit me. And, and I think AI clearly will play a massive role in making that happen for me as a consumer is having my own personal AI assistant. I know we spoke to Chris about this in the, in the previous session Yeah, we did. Yeah. About, you know, my bot potentially speaking to lots of other bots. Yeah. and, and just figuring stuff out and just giving me exactly what need and being proactive as well.

Vinay:

Yeah. In

Iqbal:

being able to,

Vinay:

and, and I think your point about the device is important. I, I should probably tm this in painting this idea, but it's on record now. So I came with this idea first, which is I do think. There, there is. So we talk about AI and lots of people talk about, I need to train my AI assistant to think like me, act like me, speak like me. But your device is already doing that. Yes. And so at the moment, the the world is I need to pick an AI agent and then train that. But what if the AI was just trained by your device or the, your device was the AI agent. So actually there's a world, and I don't know when Apple Intelligence will ever be announced, but maybe that's what they're going to do with all that proprietary data of when I wake up, when I go to sleep, what I eat, how many steps I do, what I, where I am, my calendar, all of that is built in. It knows so much about me already. Absolutely. That becomes how my agent is then trained or it becomes the agent. And I think that for me is just a, a world where then. Hyper-personalisation, segmentation, all of that gets to a level. Of course there are gonna be debates about data privacy, you know, snooping, all, all of that kind of stuff. Not withstanding that and, and protecting your own data.'cause you should be in control of what you share and what you don't share. But that's the world we're kind of heading down.

Sid:

And I think clubs and organisations would love to have that level of information about every individual, you know. But, you know, if you think about I like F1 or I like Wimbledon, I can never get tickets, you know, but I'm a Spurs fan, I'm a season ticket holder, or whatever I might be, you know, how can they incentivise me to start affiliating with cross brands So all of a sudden, you know, upgrade yourself to the, to the best premium box you can buy. Make a five year commitment and we'll ensure you get, you know, two VIP tickets to Monaco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, whatever it might be.

Vinay:

Because you know that that offers right for that demographic of person who's bought. That box'cause you've got the data and, and, and, sorry, just really quickly, and another example is, I was talking to John Bartlet from IHG and he's a, he's an analyst and he looks after all their data and, and, and all that kind of stuff. And he was talking about how you can now trade in your IHG. So what would normally happen is you collect IHG points and then you burn it on better hotel rooms. So maybe you're a business traveler, you collect loads of holiday again, express or Holiday Inn, and then you go, I'm going with the family, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend it on Intercontinental. And that would, what would happen. But what they're now allowing people to do is to trade those points for experiences. So British Lions tickets or Wimbledon tickets. And so cross-selling, as you are saying, using the mechanism of this loyalty system and the currency. So you'll stick with that, but you're able to use it for other things is an interesting, sorry, I mean No, no, no, it's fine. I

Iqbal:

just, on the point around the demographics, I think that's the traditional way of doing it is once you figured out a trend amongst a certain type of person. I think now you can go beyond that. You can narrow it down to the individual. Yeah. Because you've got enough data points to say, even if we live in the same area, similar families, this, that and the other, I may have something very different in terms of my interest that they can pick up on to be able to provide a, a very personalised individual. And I

Sid:

think that ties back that, that also, when you talk about lifetime value, if you bring that into the equation, that it's, it's, you know, I can't comprehend how you'd get to that final figure because all of a sudden you're opening up so many different things for me that I can not normally do. Yeah. But actually it's because of the club or whoever the organisation is that is enabled me to do that. Yeah. Facilitated it. Therefore, yeah, I'm going to be naturally more loyal because I might get something like that.

Vinay:

Yeah, because, because the actually the, it becomes less broadcast and generic and more conversational and dialogue because I understand you better. So I'm tailoring what I'm saying to you in a way that's, it's the same as when a friend goes, you should go and watch this movie. You'll love it. I say that to you because I know you. Yeah, but I'm not gonna recommend the other movie I went and see the other day because it was, you won't like it. I loved it, but you won't like it. And I think it's getting to that le getting us close to that level of how almost friend, like, like how well you know your friends. Could you get to that recommendation?

Iqbal:

Yeah. And I think you can do that now more so because of this. You mentioned the social listening side of it, right? Where you've got, there's one thing around how you behave and what your purchasing habits are, but actually getting to know somebody really is about tapping into their social feeds and. Why are they posting on, on X and Facebook? Well, not so much Facebook these days, but Instagram and things like that. Mm-hmm. and again, those are publicly available data points that you can feed into whatever you are trying to build for your customer. And again, I'm, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing that come to fruition as well. The platforms are there to do it, right? Mm. You've got social listening platforms that are able to suck that data in, and actually it's really marketing that are using that data to build propositions and things. Yeah. But you're not seeing that kind of feedback to the services that are being offered to the same customers

Sid:

in the front. Yeah, I, I'd agree. And I, because I, I just don't think people have quite figured out how to embrace it yet, how to. How to harvest it and, and maximise. Yeah.

Vinay:

And some of it, some of it look is bandwidth's time in an organisation, when you're a busy exec, you're meeting to meeting, putting out fires, there'll be people listening to this going, that's all very well guys, but when the hell am I gonna get time to put any of this in place? But hopefully, you know, people are deploying AI to increase productivity and give time back. But you reinvest that time in doing this, thinking in that deliberate design, in making sure that if you are developing a loyalty system that you've thought about actually, what are the data points we want to collect? What's the journey our customers go through? How do we then repurpose that to this over here? How does that join with this? How do we make sure that we're mining what customers are saying in the contact center and, and the ways they contact us and bringing that out and bringing it into the repository because it all comes back to better decision making and, and, and placing our bets in the right place. and I think you've got, you know, you've got a mix of stuff that's happening right now. If you look at, some of the influencers are out there, they know this stuff. They do it really, really well. And lots of organisations are behind the curve. Because they're acting very corporate governance and risk versus startups that are renegade, disruptive, disruptive, more likely to take a risk and do so, break the rules and bend the rules and, and test it later. And I'm not saying that people should break the rules, but there's a testing of those boundaries. And I think those younger upstarts and, and newer companies are more prepared to push those boundaries than maybe some of the bigger traditional brands that still want to do things. I was talking to a, a, a social media brand, company in, in Birmingham. I was chatting to their owner and he was talking about, they do a lot of stuff on TikTok, and he said, it's amazing. You go in and you talk about the power of TikTok and you go and talk to a marketing director who's done their MBA, who's been educated the traditional way. They just come back to, right. We'll get the camera crew in and it's all high production. It's like, you don't need any of that. Yeah, you don't need it. Why are you, why are you investing? You don't need that for what you're trying to create. Shoot it on an iPhone or give it to, you know, you're creating authentic content that relates to people as opposed to, and I think there's that distrust in more polished and perfect content versus, I'm sorry, digressed there. But it, it just comes back to the point you're making about those, how those different organisations are adapting to the world in which we live in. Yeah. So I mean, really great, insights there. So two really quick questions. I say quick presupposing, they'll be quick. we talked a little bit about segmentation personalisation, but have you got any examples of any of the clubs that you are able to share? Yeah. Have you used personalisation as segmentation Well, or are you using it quite well in your opinion?

Sid:

so without giving specifics, so we. Working with various different clubs, they all have different loyalty platform providers. and there's a natural link between ticketing entry because everything you wanna do from your phone,

Vinay:

yeah.

Sid:

The vision is that you don't need to come to the stadium without anything else other than your phone. you pay from it, you enter the stadium from it, your loyalty's built into it, and there's a clo close link between loyalty and ticketing, which you may or may not be surprising. because ultimately that's the unique reference. That's the identifier. Yeah. Your ticket identifier is your, and, and that fundamentally helps the, the, the, the linking of all that data, because that's your key, your primary key. so in terms of what clubs are doing well between the, some of the ticketing side and the, and the loyalty side. So in terms of acquisition of fan, you find this quite a lot. So when you are onboarding new prospects, not commercial partners, or actually fans, and when you are signing up for a season tickets, they will do surveys around things that you like. Now, I don't know if you've experienced that with United, but they'll ask you questions around what are your interests, because they want to start profiling. All of a sudden, if you're into golf and we're gonna have a golf day and you're gonna get to meet a player and you're gonna get a unique experience, then let's promote that to you and, you know, do a blind raffle, for example, or whatever it might be. So, clubs are collecting that information already, but more, I wouldn't say discreetly,

Vinay:

you know, over more overtly. Yeah. Just asking the question. Yeah. They're

Iqbal:

quite open. I, I think what they also, I feel the, the sense I get is that they want consistent. Regardless of what's going on. Even, you know, during the summer periods where there's no football, they still want to engage. There's a beat rate. Yeah. Yeah. There is, there's definitely ways in which, as you say, whether it's a survey or, you know, it could this be of interest or maybe an event that's happening at old traffic or whatever, there's that consistent, connection with me. I think they want try and maintain

Sid:

and I, I think absolutely. Right. And, but in order to make sure that they're targeting you the right content, you may, you know, you may not been to golf and there's no point promoting a golf day to you. Yeah. So how do you, how do you kind of make that link and I Yeah. They're using that information and data that they're collecting. Yeah. Openly, surveys, access on content, on sites, through your cookies. Yeah. Tracing what you are looking at.'cause obviously, again, unique identifi, they know who you are. Yeah. Linking that together to then start trying to personalise Yeah. And target more personalised offers. Yeah. That's one extreme. The other side is what they can see from the, the data that they've already gathered, so that you are regularly attending games, you are coming to the same matches, you know? Sorry, you're going to the same yeah, in the same seat. Yeah. So all the matches, but you never experienced hospitality, you know, how can we try and encourage you Yeah. To take that, take that step up. Yeah. maybe it's something for you, maybe it's not. Yeah. But, you know, are you into fine dining or you into burgers or whatever it might be. Yeah. And therefore try and give you a suitable offering. Yeah. Because all of a sudden you might think, okay, I'm gonna trade my ticket in now I'm gonna get a hospitality for, for next season. Yeah. So that, that sort of stuff is quite common and, and it's being done behind the scenes. And you may see promotional content. Match day experience, premium experience,

Vinay:

and it, and is it starting to influence the decisions clubs make on their F&B? Like what they stock in terms of beers, what they're stock in terms of food, the kind of brands they bring in.'cause you, you've started to see, I think in some stadiums, you know, the trend of bringing in ales as well as traditional laggers, and other foods that people are starting to try from the traditional pine chips kind of stuff.

Sid:

Yeah. And I, I, I don't know how much of that is, data that's been harvested from external sources. Yeah. Obviously there's a community spirit that has to be supported. Yeah. So always try and support your local Yeah. you know, your local brewers, your local cheese makers, whatever that might be, and try and introduce them into those venues. one thing that you can never control is commercial sponsorship. Mm-hmm. So, Asahi Yeah. Man city. Yeah.

Vinay:

That's, it's, it, it's done deal. Yeah.

Sid:

Asahi now. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and, and that will always take precedence I think. Yeah. money talks. Yeah. Same with, it extends to tech, it extends to lots of different things, you know? Yeah. Within, within that kind of, yeah. The elite, sports, box. Yeah. So, but in terms of decision making Yes.'cause they know, you know, in terms of queues, they know where things are running out, where things are basically, you've got excessive amount of sausage roll, for example. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So they'll say, okay, we will, we'll discount them 50% on, on in this stand, in this particular area. Because if you're on this side of the stadium, you've got 50% off because you've got loads of them. Yeah. And nobody knows that on that side. There's a hundred percent, but they're running out. Yeah. Yeah. So how

Iqbal:

are they making that decision? Like so

Sid:

quickly? It's so real time data. Yeah. Basically, I mean, Olympics, we processing, I don't know, three, 400,000 transactions, Wow. A day. I mean, so you need the scale, you need, you need the, the systems that can get that information Yeah. And process it. Mm-hmm. And then obviously put it into the right decision making kind of. Tools, if you like, behind, behind the scenes. Mm-hmm.

Vinay:

So

Sid:

price optimisation, merchandise, price, optimisations to stock, inventory, maintenance, all of those different components of actually minimising loss, maximising efficiency, maximising return, all comes from that data. All of it.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. So, last question then went well, well, right. I don't even No, it's, it's, it's fine. They did, you did. Because we were talking about how they're using it and you gave examples of, and, and I guess that that continues to evolve, but that, that whole,'cause you know, in cx, hyper personalisation is talked about all the time. It's talked about as a almost in the same way as omnichannel. Like it's there in the future, but I don't, we're not there yet for all the reasons we've described. Most companies don't tend to personalise very well or segment very well. If they do segment. It's on very traditional means. Yeah. But the, the, the data sets we're collecting allows us to kind of really start to get to another layer. Of, you know, beyond the superficial understanding of site, you know, from a economic, you know, ABCDs and or, you know, just where, you know, sociographic, whatever those things might be. But it's getting used to a much more behavioral based understanding of what your customers are actually doing. Yeah. And

Sid:

I think that's extensive and content now. Yeah. And, and you know, we use it from a marketing angle and A CFO looks at our website. We serve slightly different content or different pages. I think that would, will start proliferating through, through clubs and through fans.

Vinay:

I think, I think we expect it, we, we expect there to be more relevance in what we're seeing at brands. I don't think we're really accept, I don't whether it's unconsciously or consciously, I think we're being more turned off by just generic content. Yeah. Because if you think about our daily lives, you know, we we're fed algorithms on our social media that give us content to our needs. You turn on Netflix, it's given you a set of recommendations. I mean, even before of that, Amazon was the king of it all. That would just say people like you bought this and you'd go, oh, I'll have some of that then. and that was the start of it, right? So that, that, you know, companies have caught, they're sitting on that gold mine. It's just about how do they execute that. Yeah. So my final question was gonna be, and I'll give you a couple of minutes to think about it, and I want you think about it, I'll, I'll ask a question, but what lessons can the sports industry, what lessons can, can other industries take from what you've, what you've done in the sports industry? So people like retail, travel, how can they begin to think about some of the things you've talked about today about what they do in their, in their, in their daily role? And I mean, we've, we've obviously talked to organisations all the time about that. I mean, what, what are your, what are your thoughts

Iqbal:

on Yeah, I mean, you've been working with a travel company recently and spoke, worked with many retailers in the past. I think it just goes back to your original point around. Way too many disparate systems and actually, that whole understanding of how your customers are behaving in store versus how they interact with you on the website. A lot of these organis, they haven't really kind of been able to pull that information together. and that's why there's, there's a lack of being able to provide a personalised capability, I think through the apps that they've produced, makes, makes a bit of a difference. Mm-hmm. but I think just going back to your point around where everybody is, it's a journey, right? You've gotta, as long as you know, you're kind of working to towards, designing the right solution, you'll get there, but kind of pick your words as you go along because nobody has the time to look at it. As, as so holistically, you, you've gotta, you've gotta pick your battles along the way. Yeah. But you know, at the end of the day, it's a journey. You've gotta kind of

Vinay:

work towards that. It, it's a journey. And I think the, the first question is, is getting really clear on what is the, what are the coordinates, what's the postcode you're trying to get to, which will then drive all the other decision making.'cause I think that's often an under invested step. Yeah. People talk about it. They have a mission statement, they have their values, they have their, and it's loosely, Desi loosely inferred in the things that talk about it, but more being more deliberate and precise in your thinking. Like, you might never get there, but you, you, you've got a better chance of getting as close to there as possible.

Sid:

But I think what I've learned and what I'm seeing now and which is why we are disruptive and I'm proud to be disruptive. Yeah. We do, because everyone's been quite historically institutionalised by what prescribed in terms of what they, what the systems offer them is what they kind of get. the ones that are actually thought leading in this. Think of the end output first. What, what is it that you are trying to get out at the end? Yeah. And is that reporting or data or whatever it is? What's the final state look like? And then work backwards from that. Mm-hmm. The input needs to be because everyone starts from the input and then they get to the end state. And actually it's, it doesn't mean anything to me. Yeah. And then you've got lots of manipulation and lots of people Yeah. Interacting to try and, you know, scuffling around to try and get that and, and, and that's, yeah. Changing, I think people

Iqbal:

understanding that and, and just on that point, I, I think usually in the past it's always been about what's the ROI like you are asking you to spend this in this technology. That's the wrong question. Yeah. The ROI is a consequence of the outcome that you wanna focus on. Yeah. And you said like, if you define that really well yeah. Then okay, let's figure out how we get there. but actually at the end of it, that's the benchmark. That's how we're gonna, yeah. That's how we're gonna decide whether this was a success or. And I think that gets lost sometimes.

Sid:

And, and I also see lots of clubs that we're working with. There's constant innovation, constant initiatives coming about, you know, talk about RFID. So S-R-F-I-D. You take stock out the stock and walk onto the shop floor, they're now stock. You've got, you sell it. Yeah. They know instantly, you know, there's no days of scanning things out the back, Scott, and putting them on you. You're replenishing based on Yeah. Sales kind of real, real time. and I take that for sort of granted now, you know. Yeah. I take when people talk about omnichannel and you know that, I mean like, you know what, you're not doing that as in fine line return in store. Yeah. These are all common, it's all retail centric kind of processes that have made their way into sport. But when you flip it the other way around, it is about also breaking those data silos. But you, because you don't know what, where things are gonna go next and what innovation's gonna come next. Don't be hampered by the technology stack and the, and the, and the foundations to allow you to open, you know, your, your landscape and your horizons to do whatever it may be within reason. Yeah. So if I want to hook my data point directly into Uber,'cause I'm leaving the ground Yeah. You know, or whatever it might be, then it should automatically get me a taxi and it should know where I'm going. All of these different things. But in order to do that, you need the, the, the, the framework and Mm. And, and the foundations for it. And, and that's where the movement to the likes of us and you know

Vinay:

Yeah.

Sid:

What what can only, can only help.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. And I, I love that about the, the outcome thing, that there was somebody much wiser than I once says. You always start with the end in mind. Yeah. And I think that's just a, a mantra that we need to have more of. But look, Sid, thank you so much. It's been brilliant. Really love the conversation. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. lots of great nuggets there. so yeah, we look forward to the episode going out. we've got some of the great episodes coming up. John Bartlett from I hgs are gonna be coming on to talk to us, more about data and how they're using it in them. we've got a couple of CX leaders, lined up to come on our podcast as well. hopefully we'll get George and, Luke on, who are gonna be talking to us about the role of sound, in customer experience. So they'll be coming on soon as well. So yes, stay tuned and if you've not already subscribed, hit that subscribe button. every subscription helps this channel, and we'll see you next time.

Sid:

Thank you guys. Thanks.